Emax

All these questions have been hashed and rehashed time and again and the answers should be in the archives...

With that said-----  (disclaimer- I am the one who figured out how to do slim floppy and I am the seller of the Emax SCSI kits)....

#1- The HxC - Ugly and external 
- see item c under "Why bother with SCSI"

There is no information on the Flexidrive compatibility with other systems.
The floppy in Emax is not a standard PC A/B floppy it uses a drive select closer to the Schugart standard.
Most standard floppy drives don't have a drive select points to even solder jumpers anymore...

So the connector pinout must be adapted / converted - I don't see any of the info for the Flexidrive.

#2- Scsi upgrade is $60 including shipping.
A slim floppy converter (which must be modified per my instructions on my website) is $10 off ebay
Slim floppy drives go for as little as $5 used up to $35 for brand new.
I usually just buy a couple or three used for $10-15 off ebay and then I have a spare or two...
SCSI PCD-50b Flash drives are going for about $60+ from atari/amiga sites.

#3 Replacing the floppy drive with a stock replacement might be considered cost prohibitive (about $75) but can be done.
Some people just want to keep it stock- which is just fine...

Why bother with SCSI?
a) This isn't a "hack", the chips are made from the original E-mu binaries
- the upgrade procedure from the factory is what is used for the update.

b) It works within the menu's of the Emax OS

c) Unlike Floppy Emulator, you don't have to load Emax OS into every single "floppy" directory- it sees it as a Hard disk, not "99 floppies" or whatever.
You load the OS 1 time.

d) An Emax Hard disk contains 35 banks and it is limited to 20MB formattable by Emax.
Buying "large" flash isn't useful and small flash cost less...
32MB flash is what I use and you can get them CHEAP - $2-3 per flash NEW on ebay.....

e) You do have the ability to have multiple drives if desired- up to 7 (though that might not be practical). :-)
In my case I have a Microtech dual slot PC Card drive (model DPAI-SCSI) this gives me a total of 71 accessible banks from 1 drive plus the floppy.

Please note that Emax is only SCSI TARGET aware- so multi-slot drives that are LUN based will only see 1 slot....
Multi Slot drives that are TARGET based (like the MIcroTech) will see each slot as a different drive number.
- as far as I am aware the most slots MicroTech released in a Target based drive was 3, FYI).

Please note - SCM drives are all LUN based, therefore they will only see 1 slot in Emax 1 and 2.
So while they may have 5 slots (PCD-50b) you may only use the PC Card slot with the Emax.
I have no note on compatibility for PCD-60b because I have never tested one...

Hope that is helpful.


Regards,
Ted




On May 19, 2012, at 1:12 AM, Carl Lofgren wrote:

When I was investigating the HxC (which I think is clever but quite ugly) I found something called Flexidrive S4 - looks like a HxC but with a better build.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL4-f-4cE-U

/C

>________________________________
> From: nuwavboy <nuwavboy@...>
>To: emax@yahoogroups.com 
>Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2012 7:59 AM
>Subject: [emax] Greetings, new Emax 1 owner - questions...
> 
>
>  
>Hello - I just picked up a rack Emax 1, non scsi for 50$ with manual. Looks super clean, but I don't have any disks to test it right now, but powers up etc...
>
>1. the disk eject seems to not be working. I can put a disk in, but the disk doesn't "seat" itself properly, and then I have to pull it out manually.
>
>2. It's a rev c board, which I assume is upgradeable to scsi...?
>
>So, since I have little money invested in it so far, what would people recommend for options.
>
>1. spend the money (about 135$) for an HxC
>
>2. Scsi upgrade w/slim floppy and scsi card reader
>
>3. replace the floppy with a working drive (models?)
>
>I picked this up to play around with and compare to my EII. I'd like to keep it as inexpensive as possible, but am willing toput some work into it.
>
>Thanks for any advice!
>
>80sboy
>tom
>
>
> 
>
>

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